Alumni buy condos for game day near campuses

Jeff D. Opdyke, The Wall Street JournalCHICAGO TRIBUNE

It's been about two decades since Jeffrey Carbo, a landscape architect in Alexandria, La., graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, but he plans to return to campus at least seven times this fall to cheer the football team. If he and his wife can't get a hotel room--a difficult task in this football-crazed town--they will drive there and back in one day, a 300-mile round trip.

In future years, they hope to make the trip in higher style. A year ago, they paid more than $200,000 to secure a two-bedroom condominium in Fieldhouse, a development that is under construction a short walk from Tiger Stadium.

High-end condominium developments are springing up in many college towns, drawing die-hard football fans wanting a place to stay a short walk from the stadium of their alma mater.

Buyers say the condos can be a good investment and save them hunting a hotel room for crowded home-game weekends. They're also a place to party with fellow alumni.

Although there are just a handful of home football games a year, some developments offer management and concierge services to help owners rent out the condos like hotel rooms. But in most developments it's taboo to rent to students.

"It's brutal to find a place to stay on game day in many of these college towns, and you have a lot of rabid fans out there who want to own a piece of real estate like this," says Michael McGwier, executive managing director at Trammell Crow Residential, an Atlanta firm that recently teamed up with developer Gameday Centers Southeastern LLC to market condos planned near the University of Notre Dame, the University of Tennessee and other locations.

The condos generally are fitted with hardwood floors, granite counters and stainless-steel appliances.

Prices can range from $145,000 for a studio across the street from Rupp Arena, home of the University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, to nearly $1.1 million for a penthouse at the recently completed Tallahassee Center tied to the Florida State Seminoles.

By lending its name to a development, school teams get part of the purchase price, typically 1 percent. The University of Georgia in Athens has taken in about $275,000 from sales at a condo complex that opened two years ago a few blocks from its Sanford Stadium, according to Gameday Centers.

"We're diehard LSU fans," Carbo says, "and as we get older we're looking for a place to make a weekend out of a football game instead of just an afternoon and a night."

At the Fieldhouse near LSU, 60 percent of the 98-unit, French Quarter-style complex has been sold, according to Capstone Development Corp., the Birmingham, Ala., builder of student housing that is spearheading the project. At Gameday Centers' complex at the University of Georgia, the 133 suites sold out within months of opening in September 2004, the Atlanta company says.

Gameday Centers says one-bedroom units that originally sold for $130,000 when the Georgia Gameday Center in Athens opened are now going for $190,000 to $200,000. Prices are getting support in part because there are a relatively small number of units available and a large number of football-mad alumni who want a place to stay on game-day weekends, the company says.

Ray and Rita Bass have attended Bulldog home games at the University of Georgia for 30 years. After the final whistle, they used to drive the 65 miles back home to Clarkesville, Ga. But two years ago, the couple bought a one-bedroom condo at the Georgia Gameday Center.

After the game, in which Georgia trounced Alabama-Birmingham, the jubilant condo crowd returned to continue the festivities in the Gameday Center clubroom, where big-screen TVs showed other games from around the country, Ray Bass says.

"For us," Bass says, "this condo is an investment, but it's also a place to spend more time with friends on football weekends. Hotels in Athens fill up sometimes years in advance for Georgia games, and we now have a place where we can spend the entire weekend, party, and not have to drive back the same night."

Moving back to college towns has broader appeal than just to football fans. Golf-course communities, for instance, have sprung up that are affiliated with schools such as Georgia Tech University and Texas A&M University.

Continuing-care retirement centers have emerged at colleges including the University of Florida and Pennsylvania State University. The schools derive income from the centers, and older residents gain access to the social and cultural scene that exists around colleges.

Most buyers of sports-related condos "are well-to-do college-football fans looking for a place to tailgate before a game, and an alternative to an expensive RV or staying in hotel rooms," says Kent Campbell, executive vice president at Capstone Development, which plans several Fieldhouses in addition to the one at LSU.

Some buyers are eyeing the condos for rental income, not a place to party. Bill Horak and his mother two years ago bought three units at the Tallahassee Center, which is opening this month.

"This is for investment income," says Horak, a 1985 Florida State graduate who runs a financial planning firm in Tallahassee and himself takes in every Seminole home game. "We've got eight home games a year and the [Florida] legislature is in session three or four months a year. What better place to stay?"

He expects to rent his units for about $250 a night on home-game weekends, and for $1,200 to $1,400 a month when the legislature is in session.